[Vm-dev] HiDpi support in MacOS

Juan Vuletich JuanVuletich at zoho.com
Wed Apr 27 22:39:00 UTC 2022


Hi Folks,

I just discovered that the recent 202204190959 Mac VM includes Tobias 
HiDpi support on the Mac. This is very good news indeed, but It is not 
exactly what most users would prefer.

On a Retina MacBook, you can set an apparent display resolution (System 
Preferences.../ Displays). By default, my 2019 15" MBP suggest half 
"real" resolution ("Looks like 1440x900" when LCD is 2880x1800). In this 
case, the new VM offers the true native resolution to Cuis / Squeak. So, 
in this case, it works perfectly well, and everything looks really great.

The problem is that MacOs supports several other apparent resolutions. 
Many people, me included, prefer "Looks like 1680x1050" or "Looks like 
1920x1200") to have more room for other Mac apps. But in these cases, 
the VM doesn't offer the LCD native resolution to Cuis / Squeak anymore. 
It offers twice the apparent resolution, i.e. 3360x2100 or 3840x2400. 
Then MacOs scales this higher virtual resolution to the actual 
2880x1800, but it generates visual artifacts and a decrease in visual 
quality.

For my own private use, the solution is to use the EasyRes application, 
and set the display to the true 2880x1800 resolution. When I do this, 
Cuis gets the corrrect Display size both with previous and newer VMs.

But it would be great if there was a way for other Cuis / Squeak users 
to get their true Display resolution by default, and without needing to 
change OS settings each time they start their favorite Smalltalk.

Thanks,

-- 
Juan Vuletich
www.cuis-smalltalk.org
https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cuis-Smalltalk-Dev
https://github.com/jvuletich
https://www.linkedin.com/in/juan-vuletich-75611b3
https://independent.academia.edu/JuanVuletich
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Juan-Vuletich
https://patents.justia.com/inventor/juan-manuel-vuletich
https://twitter.com/JuanVuletich



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